Have You Got The Seven Year Hitch?

This is a massive campaign which started in October 2011 and is headed by The Sleep Council. If you want to optimise your sleep and still manage to feel good about yourself, look good and get the most out of life then you should purchase a new mattress after seven years!

“A mattress that looks OK, may not actually be OK, that’s the hitch”

Looking at your bed and mattress it may look okay but in reality it may not actually be giving you the support or comfort you need for a healthy, refreshing night’s sleep. The Seven Year Hitch is a massive campaign as mentioned and it came around following a number of studies which raised awareness:

Firstly a study by The Furniture Industry Research Association (FIRA) showed that beds that were hitting the six year old mark were a lot less comfortable than a new one. Now you may think well that is pretty obvious but in reality there is a significant difference and the bed offers less support due to wear and tear from movement and body weight as well as sweat and other debris.

Secondly a top sleep expert, Dr Chris Idzikowski found that actually purchasing a new bed could be more beneficial to someone and more effective than sleeping tablets. When a new bed was purchased this study measured the amount and quality of sleep participants were getting in comparison to their old bed. On average they saw an increase of 42 minutes on the new bed whereas sleeping tablets only show improvement of 5-10 minutes.

Now if your squeamish then this third point is something you may well want to skip! Each night we lose around half a pint of fluid and in addition to this we shed a pound of dead skin cells every year. This is a mini heaven for dust mites which make their home in our mattress. The UK has one of the largest number of people suffering from Asthma, five million plus and this figure is still growing. Dust mites are a common trigger with just two micrograms per gram (mcg/g) of dust mite allergen causing hy­per­sen­siti­vity in asthma sufferers. Ten mcg/g can actually pose a serious health risk and one in five aged mattresses contain between two and ten mcg/g and one in twenty has above ten mcg/g.

Prestige Beds make the process of finding and purchasing a new mattress really easy! Come to one of our showrooms and take a look at the massive range we have on offer. We bring you the finest products from brand names like Silentnight, Sleepeezee and Sealy Posturepedic including many more.